Wednesday 13 April 2011

9. Contribution

During the making our film we both contributed equally, splitting work in half so that not one of us had to do too much. We worked together and had good communication, improving our organisation skills so that everything was completed on time. We ensured that we spoke to each  on a regular basis this ensured that we were able to complete everything, and get tasks sorted a lot more easily.


Jake Stephenson_
During the planning of making our film we constantly discussed what we were doing, keeping communication at a maximum so that each of us no what we were doing. I helped make sure that everything was organised, making list for everything we had to do, for example what we needed to film, and things such as what we had to do before hand e.g. make blood, making sure that everything was completed and ready for when we had to film. We also went to the shop and bought several ingredients that we need for the fake blood, such as honey, food colouring and washing up liquid.
Also helped make sure that everything was kept to a plan, by making lists this ensured that our time keeping was very good which enabled us to get everything done on time.
Before we filmed for research purposes i watched several films, for example dawn of the dead, 28 days and weeks later and zombie land. I also i watched a psychological horror, as we wanted to include an underlying psychological twist in our film. I thought that watching a psychological horror such as dark water, would help us create a more effective film.
As both me and Charlotte have different strengths, for example i am more artistic, so during the planning of our film i drew the story board, and as Charlotte is more literate she did the script. I also complete the recce sheets where we had to take pictures of our setting.
When posting on our blog when we were not in media class together, we split the equally for example, for our evaluation, i did questions one, two, five and eight.

During the production of the our film I was the one that did the make for our zombie.
I applied white face paint with sponges and then added dark colour such as black and grey for under the eyes, then painted red around the mouth using paint brushes.



During the filming process, i both directed and filmed taking turns with Charlotte. I helped position the camera ensuring that there was enough head and lead room etc, and made sure that the characters were all in the right position.

After finishing filming i spent my lessons and free periods, going through our media film, sorting the clips out and editing out film. I added effects to our film for example, changing the brightness and contrast of some scenes, and adding our title sequences, at the beginning. I also sorted out a continuity issue we had in the kitchen, were it appeared there was a jump shot.
Also after we had finished editing i helped take part in the making of our soundtrack, collecting sounds that i thought would be appropriate for our film. I then helped put the sounds together, creating the soundtrack. 


Charlotte Cox.
During the planning of our film, I believe our communication skills were strong due to us knowing each other for a few years (since secondary school) , and this worked to our advantage as I could easily commute to where we were filimg our horror film (Jake's house) as knowing each other previously I know how to get to his house easily. These skills also meant that we we could easily discuss, advise and encourage each other on our indivdual tasks which we distributed easily as we knew each others strengths. For example Jake being the more artistic out of us he created the storyboard and obviously with his house being the main location and the park situated just across the road he could easily take photographs of these locations for our recce sheet. However I am more skilled at writing based activities which is why I offered to create the script and to update it when our plot developed. Also Jake scanned our weekly updates and lists that we created every week we filmed and re shot scenes to the blog whilst I expanded upon them and stated briefly what we did due to my literate skills. I answereed evaluative questions 3,4,6 and 8.

Throughout inital research into target audience I watched some films to get an insight into what could be included in the film and I think it gave me an overall insight into what I could expect in the typical zombie film and psychological film. I watched films such as 28 Days Later, Zombie Land, The Orphan and Dark Water. After watching these films me and Jake further discussed our opinions and strengths and limitations and I generally believe that this was a good way of contributing to our planning of our filming as we watched a couple together and some alone which allowed us to each get different insights and then give each other feedback.

During preparation before our film I back combed zombie's hair whilst Jake did their make-up which again I believe both suited our strengths. During production of our film we both took it in turns to shoot scenes as we each wanted to gain some experience ourselves for example I would be adjusting the tripod, checking the composition (headroom, leadroom, rule of thirds, framing, whitebalancing, etc) and whilst I'd be filming one scene, Jake would be controlling the lighting and directing actors what to do and where to stand and then we would swap every so often.


Everything else we did was pretty much divided equally so not one person had more effort to put in or more work to do than the other. In our own time we met up after college, on breaks and at dinners and planned thrououghly what we planned to do and when and what we needed etc and went shopping for items to make the fake blood together. In my own time (after college and in lunch breaks) and in lesson time I edited our film until the deadline was fast approaching and instead of continuing to jointly edit, I decided to make a start on Garageband, muting any unwanted camera noice/people's voices, collecting and gathering sounds and overlapping them to sound more suited to our genre and matching them accordingly to our narrative. When Jake finished the ending of the editing he then joined me in assissting with the soundtrack, as now the editing was finished we could finally import the video onto garageband so we could adjust volumes and the video helped match audio to the narrative more accurately. 

Final Film


Overall we were pleased with our final film, however we thought that some scenes were better than others. For example we were pleased with the flashing sequences at the beginning, the door opening scene and this reflected through our feedback. People commented on how they particularly liked when the victim was being dragged by the zombie into the alleyway and the flashes of pixelated TV shots. 

On the other hand, we weren't pleased with some of the audio matching the film, as in places we felt that this wasn't achieved correctly, for example the sound that was supposed to accompany the fuzzyTV flashes at the end didn't play at he right time, it was a fraction of a second before of after. Also we could hear unwanted pieces of dialogue in places where it shouldn't be and unfortunately w only realised this last minute and therefore this couldn't be put right due to lack of time.

Now we have approached the end of our project we have geuinely enjoyed producing this piece of film and are really pleased with the outcome.

Week Calendar

Week 2: As you can see, above is our new shot list which we re wrote after our initial film shot list became outdated due to plot development and we ticked each shot off as we went along to keep organised and minimize stress levels during filming at all times. We also included a note reminding us to leave enough head room and lead room during our framing as in the first week of shooting many frames simply weren't framed correctly.
Week 3:watched an episode of Vampire Diaries one week and we noted a suspenseful scene where the door was opened and we thought we would note down the shots used. It took a while to do as the shots were repeated and we had to keep stopping and starting the episode but eventually we followed similar shots and overall we both thought that our door opening scenes were one of our strongest parts.
The sheet entitles "Zombie Plan" was  from Week 1: When we had set our actors and slightly changed our script but when we were still thinking of including a quote from the bible, and we researched into t and found one that we really liked but we ended up deciding against it and having a soundtrack playing in the opening credits.

Week 3/4: Here,we made our very own 'recipe' for fake blood so we produced the right consistency every time. We also made a note of what our main character, Alice worse on our very first shoot and we made sure that she wore the same items of clothing in each 3 of our re shoots. In addition to this we made addition notes (Plan of Action, Week 2) where we wrote down extra shots we had thought of since our first shoot which we constantly kept referring to to make sure we didn't forget any shots.
We made a list of what we needed to take to film which we took with us every time we booked out equipment and a list of what we needed before ever shoot/re shoot.

To make sure that we were organised during our filming stages we debriefed the actors before arriving on set so they knew what to wear/bring on the day and we also had a set of time slots hat we wrote down and made sure we kept to so we could keep on top of our time and not become stressed- which would have happened if we had to do each characters hair and make up all at once, straight after each other. We made sure that we allowed enough time for each person and I think this worked really effectively.

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Script_Updated

Date: Saturday 6th February


Cast and Crew:


Alice Davis
Kimberly MacGalloway
Janay Gibson
Amber Hutchinson


Times:


Janay Gibson, 16:15


Amber Hutchinson, 16:30


Kimberly and Alice, 17:00



(*Colour corresponds to the part each actor is playing)
(Grey Corresponds to the un changed parts of our film)
(** This is highlighted due to it being taken from our preliminary exercise therefore we didn't need to cast an actor.)



Script

INT. CIVILLIAN’S HOUSE – STAIRWAY – MIDDAY
CIVILLIAN#1
CIVILLIAN#1 SCRAMBLES UPON THE STAIRCASE WITH A CAMCORDER IN HAND FROM THE CAMERAS POINT OF VIEW. HE SCREAMS, STUMBLES AND THE CAMCORDER FLYS OUT OF HIS HAND AND OUT OF REACH. CIVILLIAN IS THEN DRAGGED DOWNSTAIRS PRESUMABLY BY A ZOMBIE.

EXT. VERNON PARK – EARLY EVENING
ZOMBIE#1
ZOMBIE#1 ZOOMED IN UPON FACIAL AREA AND LIFTS HEAD UPWARDS, STARING STRAIGHT INTO THE CAMERA 
FLASH OF BLACKNESS

EXT. VERNON PARK -  LATE AFTERNOON
A CROW PERCHED IN A TREE TURNS ITS HEAD TO THE RIGHT
FLASH OF BLACKNESS
ZOMBIE#1
ZOMBIE#1 EXTREME CLOSE UP OF THE ZOMBIE'S EYES GAZING INTO THE CAMERA LENS.
FLASH OF BLACKNESS
ENTER TITLES
 INT. CIVILLIAN#2'S HOUSE
THE CIVILLIAN IS LYING DOWN ON THE FLOOR AND BEING DRAGGED AWAY BY A ZOMBIE. THIS IS FOLLOWED BY CIVILLIAN#2'S SCREAMS

FLASH OF A PIXELATED TV SCREEN

FLASH OF BLACKNESS
ENTER TITLES 


EXT. VERNON PARK - LATE AFTERNOON
THE CROW SETS FLIGHT
FLASH OF A PIXELATED TV SCREEN


INT. DAVIES HOUSE – ALICE’S LIVING ROOM – EVENING
ALICE AND ZOMBIE#2
A YOUNG, VULNERABLE 16 YEAR OLD GIRL IS ALONE WATCHING TV AT NIGHT WHEN SUDDENLY THE TV FLICKERS, ALONG WITH THE LIGHT WHEN A LOUD NOISE OCCURS OUT OF NOWHERE. ASSUMING SOMEONE IS AT THE KITCHEN WINDOW, ALICE MAKES HER WAY OVER TO IT AND PERCHES HERSELF UPON THE KITCHEN COUNTER, BEFORE SCOURING THE GARDEN THROUGH THE WINDOW. AS SHE DOES THIS A HAND BANGS AGAINST THE WINDOW PANE AND STARTLES HERAS IT TRIGGERS THE ALARM. THINKING IT’S AN INJURED PERSON SHE SCRAMBLES IN THE DRAWERS, SEARCHING FOR A TORCH TO USE AS A LIGHT SOURCE SO SHE CAN GO OUTSIDE AND HELP THE ‘INNOCENT CIVILLIAN’(AS THE OUTSIDE LIGHT DOES NOT WORK). AS SOON AS ALICE FINDS THE TORCH SHE RUNS TOWARDS THE DOOR AND OPENS IT, HEADING STRAIGHT FOR OUTSIDE. WITH IT BEING TOTAL BLACKNESS SHE TURNS ON THE TORCH AND SCANS THE GARDEN LOOKING FOR THE MYSTERIOUS FIGURE SHE ASSUMES TO BE HURT WHEN THE DOOR BEHIND HER CLOSES WITH AN ALMIGHTY FORCE WHICH CAUSES HER TO BE SCARED AND IN RETURN DROP THE TORCH. AS ALICE IS NOW IN BLACKNESS SHE PROCEEDS TO PICK IT UP AND AS SHE STANDS UP AND TURNS TO SEARCH FOR THE VICTIM AGAIN, THE ‘MYSTERIOUS FIGURE’ TURNS OUT TO BE A ZOMBIE AND IS  STANDING FACE TO FACE TO HER. AS ALICE SCREAMS, THE FILM SEEMS TO FINISH ON A CLIFFHANGER.
SCENE FADES TO BLACK


EXT .DAVIES HOUSE - ALICE'S GARDEN - EVENING
ALICE AND ZOMBIE#2


ALL THAT CAN BE SEEN IS FROM A BIRDS EYE VIEW OF THE GARDEN - ALICE BEING DRAGGED BY ZOMBIE#2

FLASHES OF BLACKNESS


ALICE IS CONTINUALLY BEING DRAGGED AND NOW IS BEING PULLED THROUGH THE GATED ATTHE BACK OF THE GARDEN
FLASHES OF BLACKNESS
FLASHES OF TV BREAKING UP
AFTER BEING DRAGGED THROUGH THE GATE ZOMBIE#2 HAS SUCCESSFULLY DRAGGED ALICE THROUGH THE GARDEN AND INTO THE ALLEYWAY BEYOND.
END OF SEQUENCE.




What we plan to take out:

Camera
Tripod
Torch (x2)
Lights
Filters (Blue/green)

Lighting Design Sheet

Health and Safety certificate

Release Form For Actors